Description:
The Yellowstone-to-Yukon corridor (Y2Y) encompasses nearly half a million square miles of the northern Rocky Mountains, housing 11 national parks and myriad wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, and forest reserves. But with resorts sprouting out of its valleys and housing developments creeping up the foothills, concerns have mounted over the welfare of the region's renowned wildlife and awe-inspiring landscape. The Y2Y Conservation Initiative, founded in the early 1990s, aims to uphold "this biogeographical region's unique beauty and natural diversity by finding ways for human activities to blossom without overwhelming nature and the overall quality of life." The famed Craighead twins, wildlife biologists both, discovered in their years of studying Yellowstone's grizzlies that the bears typically wander up to a thousand square miles--meaning that even that huge park does not provide enough forage within its boundaries to ensure their survival in lean years. A Y2Y corridor of safe passage would offer animals like the grizzly ample room to roam, as well as clear migration routes to lessen the chance of extinction due to inbreeding. Already changes are taking place with such knowledge in mind, like the construction of animal bridges over major roadways. But the region's vastness also guarantees multiple private, public, and bureaucratic hoops to jump through in the conservation effort. As a book, Yellowstone to Yukon is a thoughtful primer on the landscape and its wild denizens. Striking color pictures and maps accompany narrative text up to National Geographic's usual standards, guiding readers through 2,100 miles of the "most intact collections of wildlife in the world." --Jenny Burritt
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